The Life of a Clone
by internet weaver
Summary: What is the life of a soldier? Why do we fight, what do we fight for, and why are we even alive? A clone struggles to find himself as he also tries to stay alive in the midst of the bloodiest war the galaxy has ever seen.
1. Chapter 1

I popped the seals from my helmet and sat on the durasteel floor. There was no other seating in the bay.

That was hellish, to say the least. The _Adjudicator_'s engines thrummed to life beneath my armor, and I felt myself say goodbye to the planet below. The decks rattled, which were signs of recent repair work for this wing. That explained the lack of starfighters in the fighter bay, and lack of grease stains on the plated metal we lay on. It had been damaged and then repaired, possibly during the fighting we'd been doing in the week below, and lost all their ships in the process. Or perhaps it had been particularly costly for transports. If it had, it still hadn't taken long to transport us off the planets' surface to the _Adjudicator_; there weren't many of us left to call it a victory.

I glanced down at my helmet. It had deep gouges laid into the armor right above the viewplate, and the top crest had broken clean off when I'd been tossed through the air and landed badly. I imagined that the rest of my armor wasn't in great condition, either. I picked up my DC-17 and held it against my body and wrapped myself around it, the way a musician might their instrument, and checked it over as well. There were signs of wear beginning to appear here and there, such as a cracked stock, and the trigger guard had bent. The ventilation along the outer part of the barrel was chipped as well. When had that happened? After planetfall, there hadn't been a moment of time that wasn't spent running or shooting. Sleep was a nicety that I hadn't afforded myself since planetfall, almost half a week ago.

Now that I was finally still, I realized how much I ached, but nothing seemed broken. Not that I'd know if anything was truly wrong from experience. I picked myself up off the ground and made my way over to a bulkhead and leaned against it. Several of my brothers lay along the floor. Some of them were bleeding, others held their arms to their sides, covering blackened parts of their armor.

As bad of shape as I was in, they had it worse. Blood was seeping through the cracks in their armor. Some lay flat and just breathed with difficulty, and others did even less. There were no medics, no medicine being distributed. There was no time to spare. Some other, new conflict had sprung up, and we were already on our way to the new frontline. I felt myself lay on my side. My mind was still sharp from the drugs, but my body was beginning to fail on me. I couldn't stay awake any longer, without the constant drum of heavy cannon or the snares of blaster fire to keep the beat of my consciousness, and so it began to slip.

Tomorrow had become right now, I realized as I glanced at my chrono. I had slept five hours, a lifetime for someone who had subsided on pills for the past three days. I considered myself lucky to have caught that much time, even if I had to hurry to the examination and refit. Those clones who weren't able to make their way to the examination in time were… well, it was rumored that you were cannibalized, whether or not there was anything wrong with you. That's the thing about being in a clone army: your organs are interchangeable. There's no question of matching blood types. The surgery is cut and paste. Literally. And then you're a part of the reinforcement waves instead of the first round.

The armor, likewise, is all the same size and make. You take off your armor, get into the fresh set. The ship's droids polish the old armor up, and from another old set assemble a working set of armor, recharge the energy cells, and it is ready again, and put on by the next clone in-between engagements. The same with your rifle. Nothing about you is you. Nothing about you is different. You look the same, you share your possessions, you share your combat, and you share your blood and organs. Every part of you is present in everyone else around you. Even your brains and psychology are the same.

I was disinfected. Even the water on board this ship is recycled. I was dried off by recycled air, and then I was fed the first food I'd had in days that wasn't loaded with stimulants. It was one of the only things on this ship that hadn't been recycled, reused, and then spat back onto or into me. It tasted absolutely delicious for this reason. For the reason I could eat another day made it taste like victory. The timer was present on the overhead above, and it indicated to me that I had less than ten minutes to make my way to the hangar I was brought in on. Total time in-between missions, you ask? Five hours, forty five minutes and counting. There was no time for self-congratulatory moments in this war I was fighting.

My new armor was just the same as the old armor, it even had the same familiar smell to it. My rifle had the same familiar weight to it that it should have, though in the days of fighting I had grown used to a lighter than usual stock.

I arrived on the deck. It was still bloodstained in areas, despite the droids cleaning it as best they could. The ship was still in hyperspace, but mechanics had already been over the few dropships that had made the return journey from that dismal moon.

The Admiral walked about the ship, instructing us via holovid as to where the central city's capital was, and how we were to storm it, which group we were assigned to. I had been a part of Epsilon squadron, Gold group. I was now Alpha squadron, Red group. It was only important for self-identification later. We stood through it mutely, staring at the display and learning what we could of the city. The ship came out of hyperspace, straight into a battle that was already being waged. The ship shuddered under withering turbolaser fire. The ship began a yaw and returned fire. I saw starships exiting their adjacent hangars, ready to engage the enemy ships.

We formed up and marched to our dropships silently, filing past the Admiral who had only just finished his briefing. The life of a clone was one of never sleeping, of never resting, of non-stop combat. It became your life.


	2. Chapter 2

The whine of the dropship's engines made it hard to hear the final notes and orders from our general, but I understood the gist of it. The battle was not going well. There were new droids being fielded by the enemy- they were more accurate and more durable than the previous incarnation of tin soldiers we had faced. I wondered that, if they continued to increase the quality of the soldiers, what sort of monsters they would be producing in ten years' time. If they continued, would I be around to see it? Would anyone?

We were supposed to meet up with some survivors- a suicide mission, I knew, and to continue harassment in the old city, to hold the line or evacuate the survivors to meet up with

Our frontline would be right next to our cannons- I knew this meant that the battle was going quite poorly. We were to help hold the line- the few thousand of us weren't numerous enough to turn the tide. We were just numerous enough to keep the lines from completely breaking. The open cockpit let me see the destroyed city- some of the buildings had burned completely through and had many holes in them, giving perfect marksman positions to those who could climb them from the inside.

I marked them with my nav computer. The transport dipped, and a missile flew past a moment later. We were now within the alleyways between buildings. Another missile detonated against a wall next to us, but the transport stayed straight before banking a hard right turn. Our cannons opened up, and the transport spun on its axis, lowering to the ground. We knew our job- we leapt from the vehicle. Immediately, from almost all sides, droids stepped from the alleyways, from behind pillars, and the rooftops, and began pouring blaster fire into the transport. Clones fired from a couple of buildings, trying to lay down suppressive fire, but it was too little to hold the droids back.

I retreated immediately. I heard the transport's engines sputter, and the resulting explosion drove me from my feet. I tumbled up the stairs, and felt a pair of arms pull me the rest of the way. I kicked at the stairs, trying to stand. I got my first look at a new tin soldier- unlike the sand colored original droids, these were steel colored, and instead of holding a weapon in their hand, the weapon was wrist-mounted, and they held it to their sensor array, in their head, using it to aim rather than the built-in scopes in the unreliable blasters used by the original droids.

The stone doors slammed shut behind my squad, and then there was almost dead silence. I saw that there were only a few clones in this building- my helmet told me that hardly any were from the same unit, let alone the same squadron. None had their helmets off, but there didn't seem to be any officers, but as we walked our way to the center of the room, I realized that one of the clones must have taken charge per seniority or due to orders.

"There aren't many of you," he said. "We were told to expect at least a thousand."

"We were told the LZ was safe. Where's the artillery?"

"They're on the other side of the street. Your pilot must have gotten confused or lost. Artillery is currently shelling the droid manufacturing plant, but it is thickly plated or shielded- droids are still coming out of there. We have to hold the ground from here to the artillery, and keep them protected. That's your job. Take yourselves and clear the surrounding area of droids- they're in the middle of a push right now, so take up positions in the windows or anywhere you find appropriate, and shoot anything that moves but doesn't breathe."

We said nothing, we didn't even salute, we just ran for the stairs. I hit the stairs at a full sprint, and burst out the back door- there was an archway protecting us from crossfire. I signaled with my hand to the two troopers behind me- covering fire down the alleyway for me. I leapt across to the door on the other side and fired my DC-17 at the handle, then plowed into it with all my weight. Nothing happened, but I heard my brothers open fire. There was a serious volume of return fire, and I yanked the door to the side- it was a sliding door. I continued inside, not checking if my brothers were behind me. Turning the visor's scan to maximum- there was no other motion detected in the house, nor in the adjacent garage. I opened the door between the two, and found that the adjacent garage was now missing its wall, and that the motion sensor exploded into a thousand colors. I made my way to the bricks- slowly. The droids were everywhere in the wide street in front of me. None were close enough to pull off a straight shot. I unslung my DC-17, and I aimed at the nearest one. They were all making their way towards the street that had the artillery- a pair of AT-TEs and heavy cannon, situated. I squeezed the trigger- and missed. The droids spun, and I hugged back against the wall as red lasers filled the air in the room. The fire died down. If I could just keep the droids busy, then I could delay the constant pressure on the artillery. I then saw something that made my blood run cold- a CIS tank. The tanks weren't quite artillery, but they packed enough of a punch to damage just about anything we had in the field. I crawled backwards through the rubble, and I heard the hurried footsteps of a droid. I abandoned all pretense of stealth and ran for the door, slamming it shut behind me before shooting the door control.

I sprinted for the nearest artillery, and spouted out the warning over the comm. A smaller gun- and by smaller, it was still enough to knock a house down, went from aiming up high towards street level. At that exact moment, the tank came around the corner. The gunner opened fire, and the tank wobbled. A second shot and the tank had dug itself into the dirt. It fired. The shot tore a hole through the roof of the building we'd rendezvoused to, and I could hear the screams over the comma before slapping them into silence. The small artillery piece opened up again, and this time the tank hit the ground and stayed there. The hatch popped open, and the tank's droid pilots clambered out, but were cut down before they were able to retreat by marksmen on the rooftops. Seconds after the explosion, the alleyway flooded with fresh droid army foot soldiers. Mixed in with the old droids were the new, steel ones. Blasterfire became thick enough to practically walk on overhead, and I felt someone push me towards the front lines. I turned- it was the captain. HIs comma squawked- "get into the breach, soldier!"

"On it sir!" I replied. I ran, ducking lasers. I yanked a dead clone from the barricade, and took cover there myself. I began to pick off the droids- it was hopeless, however, and I knew it. The droids were simply too numerous. It was like trying to pick out a tree in a forest of trees- and they were all moving. I found the futility as you were being overrun that day. There was a massive explosion in the middle of the street- droids were lifted as high up as a hundred feet, like rag dolls they spiraled through the air. Rocks and debris pinged off my helmet casing. The main gun from the AT-TE had fired straight into the street, vaporizing the onslaught and blasting a huge crater. It fired again- this time, however, back at the far off droid factory- they needed to re-calibrate.

Another few dropships touched down behind us, but it hardly made a dent in the losses we had taken. Still, we charged forwards, following the commander's orders. More droids spilled out into the main streets. The alleyways became hotly contested zones, as each flank had to be captured before progression was possible. It was three steady days of this, towards the enemy stronghold. Every time someone would get injured from something more intense than a laser blast, the medics would scoop him up and drag him behind the lines to be on the next dropship out. We weren't ever going to see this person again, we all knew. We had never met anyone who had been seriously injured in such a way as to not be easily operable on who had recovered- we knew their fate was sealed.

Finally, the shield began to buckle on the droid factory. The light artillery began to open fire, their slow barrels beginning to point skyward to join in the barrage. That was when the droid army chose its moment. The artillery had their orders- continue on the droid factory, no matter what happened, and there would be no retreat. The droids were now joined by droidekas- expensive as they were, we knew this was a last ditch effort to save the manufacturing plant. Shielded and bristling with automatic weaponry, we knew we were in trouble. It would take at least four troopers to bring one down with constant firing plus a few grenades, and when I say "take four troopers" I mean to imply that it could kill all four. A fifth would have to finish it off. That was the best case scenario in our simulations.

The simulations were playing themselves out right in front of me. My brethren fell like wheat before a scythe. We were cut down by the hundreds. My DC-17 fired on near full-automatic, and the clip emptied before the droideka nearest me's shields were even down. A small, anti-personnel rocket clipped the edge of the shield, and it flickered. Withering small arms fire finished it off, as a bolt snuck through a hole in the shields to finish it off. Another rolled in, but a marksman on the rooftop made sure it never got a chance to deploy its shields. The weakness of this droid was that while in transit to the battlefield, they were very vulnerable- they had no shields and could not return fire.

My clip ran hot, my rifle smoked as I turned to fire on the opposite alleyway, where the other droideka was cutting into our ranks, the droids pushing over the dead and dying. The droideka continued its firing until a comma told me to target it- hardly necessary advice. The droideka, however, seemed stunned by the massive amount of small arms fire, and ceased firing. More shots hit it, but its shields stubbornly held. _Come on you son of a bitch_ I thought to myself. It didn't have to kill us, I realized. It simply had to hold our fire while other droids managed to set up around us. It finally died, but by then the droid army had established positions behind pillars and rubble in the street. Picking them off was tedious, costly, and slow. Blaster bolts began tracking their way towards me, but I held my position. I had too good of a vantage point, and my orders were to hold this position. A droid fighter made a pass overhead- it blasted a dropship out of the air, and then began to strafe the street. Firing at it was useless, so I ignored it. I continued to fire into the flanks.

More blaster fire began to hit the barricade- this time from the front itself. More droids were charging forwards, into the hole in the middle of the street. I pressed myself against the barricade to present the lowest profile that I could to those on either side of me, and I pressed down on the trigger. I checked the stats- there weren't many of us left, and no more major scheduled reinforcements- just recent post-operated clones who were returning to the battlefield, and there weren't enough of them to warrant mention. A dropship came in- on fire, and it dispensed its cargo on a rooftop before the droid straighter came back around. The anti-air batteries opened up, and tagged it as they began lifting off. The droid straighter then returned fire, and the left engine was sheared completely off. The dropship spun out of control, into the street below. Hundreds died in the resulting explosion, and I could feel the heat through my armor. Flames licked at soldiers crawling away. The droid straighter limped its way back up into space.

I put out a call for additional ammunition- I was running dry, and used the opportunity to retreat. The explosion shook the street from under me, however. I turned- flames rose from the rumbling factory. Its roof had cracked open, and the rumble of the earth gave way to an enormous boom as the sonic wave caught up. The internal dampeners didn't manage to suppress it enough to leave my hearing very intact, but it had been equally disorienting to both combatants- the droids were slower to pick themselves up, especially the normally stable droidekas. The tide had turned- from here on out, we would not face so many droids. The cannons continued firing, slagging the factory. Resistance would be lighter now. The operation had a chance of success- the enemy's capital was now fighting with a limited number of troops. Granted, we weren't the most numerous either, but we could still take in a small number of reinforcements.

A cheer went up- I joined in. We weren't all doomed to die, not today anyways. Perhaps tomorrow? Every day there was another war for us… for me, to fight. Was that why we fought? Did we fight to join in the next war? We were of mandalorian stock, I told myself. Mandalorians loved war- they were warriors, not merely soldiers doing their duty.

The artillery focused up front and lay down some fire, scattering a few droids before crawling forwards. Despite the slow steps it took, the distance it covered in each step made us keep up with it at a jogging pace. I raised my carbon with tired arms, and kept astride it, aiming down the barrel for any threats that appeared, but few did. It seemed the droids were pulling back to the inner city- now that the manufacturing plant had died, keeping the city's central offices safe from us were their number one concern.

After a half an hour of jogging, I was starting to get lax- there weren't any threats. The artillery ground to a halt, and my nerves grew right back to where they had been half an hour ago. The streets were silent and then our comms crackled- "you are to board the ships, we are pulling out of the system." I paused- we had destroyed the factory, all that was left for us to do to conquer the planet was to march forward a few miles and deliver the knockout punch to the last of the droid forces in the city. I looked up- and saw an Old Republic cruiser and frigate both falling into the atmosphere. Neither was lit by internal lighting, but they looked like giant meteors.

The planetary shield had been down as of our initial assault- standard operating procedure was to knock it down using the ship's lasers to punch a hole into the shield. I didn't want to be the one left on the ground when the ships hit planetoid. I watched as the shield flared to life briefly as someone managed to manipulate it into closing the hole we'd opened in it earlier, but now it was flickering. It managed to catch the cruiser and break it apart before turning almost white and then disappearing completely. The cruiser was now in pieces, but the frigate was more or less intact as it fell. There was an explosion somewhere in the city, and smoke rose from somewhere within the center of the city. I thought it might be the shield generator being overloaded after being put back into service so quickly. The second overload probably caused something to explode. The frigate fell past the area the shield should encompass. I hoped the city had a shield to protect it, but if not, this area was likely to be flattened, even by a near miss, or a direct hit from any of the cruiser's fragments.

I suppose that was why we were leaving. Our duty was to take over the capital, to see to it that they ceased production of droids and their contribution to the CIS. We hadn't been the ones to defect from the Old Republic, we hadn't been the ones to bring destruction over our own heads. I still couldn't justify this, though. The battle on the ground had been bloody, costly, but at least there was a sense of purpose to it- we killed the droids and discontents who stood in our way, and left the rest alive to reorganize into a less belligerent government. This was a senseless, wholesale slaughter.

Dropships descended like a swarm of insects- many of them were battle scarred, with blaster marks along their hulls, some of them even smoking. They landed right in front of our positions. All was quiet on the front- the city, possibly even the whole planet, was doomed and we knew it. They had sided with the separatists. I looked out from the side. Spacecraft were rising from the starports, but only a few were landing. Speeder bikes were making their way anywhere they could, and the streets below were buzzing with people.

All across the city, however, our dropships were making touchdowns and loading up troopers. One landed near me. I popped my helmet off and reached for my canteen- then realized it was empty. I wondered for a moment, then realized it had taken a blaster bolt, front to back. If my legs had been placed a little wider, it would have hit me, instead.

The one I boarded emitted a whine from its engines that made me distrustful. I looked skywards to distract myself. The battle skyward was concluding, and I saw the real reason we were pulling out. We were losing in the space battle, and we were losing quite badly. Two more republic hulks were now listless, and we were pulling up to one of the last ones still engaged in combat. All around it, lasers flashes. The gunners' seat was taken, but there was a mounted, anti-personnel laser on the side, meant to cover troopers as they disembarked. I grabbed it and held on as the pilot began to maneuver us around. I aimed as carefully as I could, but still missed. The droid pilot was quick to avoid my lasers- but they maneuvered straight into a snubfighter's crosshairs, and it disintegrated in a spectacular explosion that shook the ship. I targeted another, this one was banking towards us, and this time was rewarded with a hit. There was very little effect, but it ducked under the range I could hit it before swinging back up.

I had a sinking sensation in my stomach- knowing something was about to shoot me and that I couldn't shoot it back was unpleasant, to say the least. Our ship took a sudden dive, and the droid ship shot past us, trying to loop around. I lead the target, and continued to lay down a barrage of laser fire. I might as well have been using my pistol for all the good it did. After what seemed too long, the republic dropships made their way to a Venerator-class destroyer. It had seen better days, to say the least, but it was putting up a good fight by the looks of things. The ship was rotating quickly, to let each side's shields recharge, and snubfighters launched out the back to harass enemy fighters and capital ships. Judging by the large number of republic snubfighters, I could guess that the CIS had focused on the capital ships. Many of these ships had lost their own docks, and hoped there was room on board the Venerator-class destroyer or the few other capital ships around it.

The ship skidded in- and then hit the plates while still in motion. Everyone was thrown around inside the vehicle, but it came to a stop right-side up. The pilot raised the canopy and leapt clear, and firefighter repair units came rushing forward, brandishing extinguishers like blasters.

The hangar bay in this ship was enormous- the entire bay was full of mechanics, working overtime to get craft serviceable, pulling apart the craft that weren't, to make more landing room, and otherwise running about. We stood about mutely, and I moved into the ship. Today had been a short battle. We had fought hard, and we had even won our share of the job. I looked out at the magcon field- the planet below had orange streaks as the ships fell into the inner atmosphere. There was a blinding flash, and one of the chunks from the cruiser hit the city's shields. The city was safe, it seemed, from utter annihilation. I was told to stand clear, as the last of the fighters were being recovered so we could escape to hyperspace.

The order was given to return to the main bay. We were to be given a debriefing. This was a rarity and a privilege. At least we'd get some closure about what we'd done today. We were told the truth- that the separatists would fix the factory in some fashion or another, and resume production. We, or another clone regiment, would be visiting this planet in very short order. There were millions of us, I knew. Millions of us and thousands of battlefields. The separatists had a huge army. It was rumored to be in the billions, perhaps even trillions. But even they couldn't launch attacks simultaneously- the homewards that hadn't contributed to the clone army had planetary forces of their own, so if the forces were spread too thinly, none of their attacks would succeed, and they would have lost their numerical advantage. So they were confined to a relative few operations at once, but at locations of their choosing. It was up to us to help defend the Republic. Yet we had gone on the offensive this time, to try and stem their numbers. It had worked- but we didn't have the numerical superiority we did in our home territory, and were being pressed into a retreat. We would be given further orders once we landed for a refit and repair.

The separatists had been struck a blow. Maybe that's why we fought- to strike blows against those who would steal worlds from the Republic. The news that planets had not sent in many of their own people to help us was news to me. Why was that? I could understand it in the case of a ground army- as macabre as the logic was, clones were a more sensible choice- but why not donate ships? We could have won on the ground. I found myself growing angry. My hands were shaking, making my rifle clatter against my armor as I walked down to the armory. Were they not being allowed to join, or were they simply not volunteering?

My own origins were a mystery to me- I knew I was a clone. When I looked in the mirror, I saw the same color skin, the same eyes, the same lips as the rest of the men standing in line, being shaved to better fit their armor. I remembered my training- I was a decent shot, hardly exceptional. I "passed" and made muster. I had had a batch of brothers. I talked more, back then. Mostly because I had people to talk to, something to relate about. Yes, I understand the irony of serving in a clone unit and still sharing almost nothing in common with them. They still had brothers. I was one of eight survivors from my hundred unit batch. The other seven had been re-arranged to fill in roles in other batches. I was not- I was assigned to the "flying coffin" batch. We were sent into the suicide missions.

Unit cohesion was necessary to maintaining an effective army. We were the reinforcements- if extra troops were needed for a mission, we were the extra. Assembled from other clone batches who had taken too many losses to maintain unit cohesion, our type of squadron was almost disposable. I suppose that would qualify as something in common that I shared with my clone bretheren. If you needed boots of trained soldiers on the ground, but when a whole two units was overkill, we were selected. Such was the case today. Such was always the case. The casualty count per mission had been dropping, slowly, but I hadn't expected to ever have a day like the one tomorrow promised to be- one that wasn't full of bloodshed. I heard others talking about "leave" but I figured that our unit would never receive any.

What did people do on leave, anyways?


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 4 has also been written, but is currently being edited.

I was nervous. Imagine that, nervous, as I walked up to a fellow clone, a fellow soldier. Was I that unapproachable? There were four of them clustered together, talking amicably. Our helmets were off.

He was smiling and laughing. I held my mess tray in my hands and stood next to the table. The clone looked up at me and said "is there a problem?" He asked. The others cut off their chatter instantly.

"May I sit?" I asked.

He paused. There was an awkward silence. Then the clone sitting next to him shuffled to the side, making room for me to sit.

I placed my tray down, but I knew I was an interloper. I silently promised them I would make this brief. "What does one do on leave?"

They stared at me. It was an odd sensation, being the center of someone's attention. I caught myself fidgeting. Nobody really paid attention to a clone, and of those clones, nobody really stared at what they knew to be a walking corpse. Nobody even really bothers talking to one, past "go stand over there and get shot at."

"What does one do on leave? What, is this your first tour?"

"Tour? Uh… I suppose so, yes."

"I see. Well, let me put it another way: how many missions?"

I paused. How many? One thought it would be easy to tell, but it wasn't. It had been months of continuous conflict, facing enemies who all looked the same, and for all intents and purposes were the same. You fought, you went through the motions, and you fell asleep. After four days of being awake straight, rest became a necessity rather than the nicety where one can keep track of today and yesterday. I quickly recounted each background, and discounted every hazy memory. "Thirty."

"Right. And what unit are you with?" Nobody around me was talking now. The silence was deafening. I wanted nothing more than to get up and run out of the room. And maybe drop a grenade behind me, to make sure the feeling didn't follow.

I was really fidgeting now, and I locked down my body. "One hundred eightieth legion, delta six epsilon four-"

"Right. Gotcha." He blew out a whistle through his teeth. I wondered where he'd learned to do that. "The marching dead."

I started, and then shut my mouth. I'd lost half of my legion at the battle of Skye. Heavy losses doesn't even begin to describe what it was like, but we were then pressed into service at the battle of Jabiim. We held the line at Cobalt station, when we finally got word to retreat, our dropships were knocked out of the air with however many of us were left. I didn't want to talk about it. I would rather be a part of an original legion, not one squished together out of parts. Then again, I suppose there couldn't be an eight man legion, a one clone army, but… sometimes, when you're that outnumbered… there's no substitute for boots on the ground. So that's what we became: forces to hold the line in retreats or battles. We were the spearhead, meant to take heavy losses so that intact legions with their vaunted teamwork wouldn't have to.

"But wait, explain why you haven't had leave," another clone interjected, holding some food in a spoon before shoveling it into his mouth. It took times like these to make me wonder how we were at all the same person.

"Find me one period in which there have been no battles actively occurring since this war began. Every time someone calls in reinforcements, they have to come from somewhere. Us. While returning from a battle, at least one or two of the ships always doesn't rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. That's us. We are sent straight off to wherever someone has called for reinforcements. We are placed down, and we bolster the frontline. As a unit with no cohesion… we're seen as less valuable. If the battle goes the same way it did on Jabiim… we'll be the last ones out, holding the ground so intact legions can *stay* intact. It's literally victory or almost certain death. Meanwhile, you go aboard the other ships out, and… well, do whatever it is you do on leave. So we're back to square one."

"So why are you on leave, then?"

"I don't know," I said. I gave up on trying to get a straight answer as far as leave. "Where are we?"

I had a good idea as to why, however. I figured that it was because we had lost today, but in a way that hadn't all but sealed the legion's I was a part of's fate. The republic had not lost on the ground, but they had in space. They couldn't just abandon us, and intact legions, to die on the surface. They had to pull us out. That had not happened to me before. None of our ships in this armada are now combat-worthy, and there's no direct transport straight into the front lines for the Marching Death. They couldn't take a limping ship with no weaponry and shaky shields into battle. That was a clone's job.

"I think we're headed for the nearest dry dock. It would be too much effort to unload you and find a working ship in a workable timeframe. I think you'll get leave."

"But you still haven't answered my question: what do you do on leave?" I pressed.

"Well, you have money, presumably. You do whatever you want to with it."

I stared.

"Oh great, you broke him. I told you not to say things that way. never leave things so open. Never say "ask me anything" or "say something smart." The moment you leave something so open-ended, you end up blowing out someone's mind and they come up with nothing."

"I'm sure he'll come up with something."

"Well, make that your new mission. Go find something to do. Talk to someone, learn a local culture. Relax a little, get drunk, and sleep a lot. Just for starters. More things will happen to you, I'm sure! Everyone does their own thing while on leave. Go find what you like doing most. The only way to really know is to try it. Go take a speeder bike through some nature areas. Hell, I don't know. If you want to do something, do it. What do you think?"

I blinked and put a palm to my head. So leave was an excuse to act like a civilian?

"I think I'm hoping there's an assignment on the other end of hyperspace," I said, turning to my food. He laughed, but then someone slipped, and attention turned away from me.

What waited for me on the end of this hyperspace jump?


End file.
